Title: The Footfalls Within
Author: Robert E. Howard
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Language: English
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The Footfalls Within

by

Robert E. Howard

A SOLOMON KANE STORY

First published in Weird Tales, September 1931

Weird Tales, September 1931

SOLOMON KANE gazed sombrely at the native woman who lay dead
at his feet. Little more than a girl she was, but her wasted limbs and
staring eyes showed that she had suffered much before death brought her
merciful relief. Kane noted the chain galls on her limbs, the deep
crisscrossed sears on her back, the mark of the yoke on her neck. His cold
eyes deepened strangely, showing chill glints and lights like clouds passing
across depths of ice.

"Even into this lonesome land they come," he muttered. "I had not
thought—"

He raised his head and gazed eastward. Black dots against the blue wheeled
and circled.

"The kites mark their trail," muttered the tall Englishman. "Destruction
goeth before them and death followeth after. Wo unto ye, sons of iniquity,
for the wrath of God is upon ye. The cords be loosed on the iron necks of the
hounds of hate and the bow of vengeance is strung. Ye are proud-stomached
and strong, and the people cry out beneath your feet, but retribution cometh
in the blackness of midnight and the redness of dawn." He shifted the belt
that held his heavy pistols and the keen dirk, instinctively touched the long
rapier at his hip, and went stealthily but swiftly eastward. A cruel anger
burned in his deep eyes like blue volcanic fires burning beneath leagues of
ice, and the hand that gripped his long, cat-headed stave hardened into
iron.

After some hours of steady striding, he came within hearing of the slave
train that wound its laborious way through the jungle. The piteous cries of
the slaves, the shouts and curses of the drivers, and the cracking of the
whips came plainly to his ears. Another hour brought him even with them, and
gliding along through the jungle parallel to the trail taken by the slavers,
he spied upon them safely. Kane had fought Indians in Darien and had learned
much of their woodcraft.

More than a hundred natives, young men and women, staggered along the
trail, stark naked and made fast together by cruel yoke-like affairs of wood.
These yokes, rough and heavy, fitted over their necks and linked them
together, two by two. The yokes were in turn fettered together, making one
long chain. Of the drivers there were fifteen Arabs and some seventy negro
warriors, whose weapons and fantastic apparel showed them to be of some
eastern tribe— one of those tribes subjugated and made Moslems and
allies by the conquering Arabs.

Five Arabs walked ahead of the train with some thirty of their warriors,
and five brought up the rear with the rest of the negro warriors. The rest
marched beside the staggering slaves, urging them along with shouts and
curses and with long, cruel whips which brought spurts of blood at almost
every blow. These slavers were fools as well as rogues, reflected
Kane—not more than half of them would survive the hardships of the trek
to the coast.

He wondered at the presence of these raiders, for this country lay far to
the south of the districts which they usually frequented. But avarice can
drive men far, as the Englishman knew. He had dealt with these gentry of old.
Even as he watched, old scars burned in his back—scars made by Moslem
whips in a Turkish galley. And deeper still burned Kane's unquenchable
hate.

The Puritan followed, shadowing his foes like a ghost, and as he stole
through the jungle, he racked his brain for a plan. How might he prevail
against that horde? All of the Arabs and many of their allies were armed with
guns—long, clumsy firelock affairs, it is true, but guns just the same,
enough to awe any tribe of natives who might oppose them. Some carried in
their wide girdles long, silver-chased pistols of more effective
pattern— flintlocks of Moorish and Turkish make.

Kane followed like a brooding ghost and his rage and hatred ate into his
soul like a canker. Each crack of the whips was like a blow on his own
shoulders. The heat and cruelty of the tropics play queer tricks. Ordinary
passions become monstrous things; irritation runs to a berserker rage; anger
flames into unexpected madness and men kill in a red mist of passion, and
wonder, aghast, afterward. The fury Solomon Kane felt would have been enough
at any time and in any place to shake a man to his foundation. Now it assumed
monstrous proportions, so that Kane shivered as if with a chill; iron claws
scratched at his brain and he saw the slaves and the slavers through a
crimson mist. Yet he might not have put his hate-born insanity into action
had it not been for a mishap.

One of the slaves, a slim young girl, suddenly faltered and slipped to the
earth, dragging her yoke-mate with her. A tall, hook-nosed Arab yelled
savagely and lashed her viciously. Her yoke-mate staggered partly up, but the
girl remained prone, writhing weakly beneath the lash but evidently unable to
rise. She whimpered pitifully between her parched lips, and other slavers
came about her, their whips descending on her quivering flesh in slashes of
red agony.

A half hour of rest and a little water would have revived her, but the
Arabs had no time to spare. Solomon, biting his arm until his teeth met in
the flesh as he fought for control, thanked God that the lashing had ceased
and steeled himself for the swift flash of the dagger that would put the
child beyond torment. But the Arabs were in a mood for sport. Since the girl
would fetch them no profit on the market block, they would utilize her for
their pleasure—and their humour was such as to turn men's blood to icy
water.

A shout from the first whipper brought the rest crowding around, their
bearded faces split in grins of delighted anticipation, while their savage
allies edged nearer, their eyes gleaming. The wretched slaves realized their
masters' intentions and a chorus of pitiful cries rose from them.

Kane, sick with horror, realized, too, that the girl's was to be no easy
death. He knew what the tall Moslem intended to do, as he stooped over her
with a keen dagger such as the Arabs used for skinning game. Madness overcame
the Englishman. He valued his own life little; he had risked it without
thought for the sake of a pagan child or a small animal. Yet he would not
have premeditatedly thrown away his one hope of succouring the wretches in
the train. But he acted without conscious thought. A pistol was smoking in
his hand and the tall butcher was down in the dust of the trail with his
brains oozing out, before Kane realized what he had done.

He was almost as astonished as the Arabs, who stood frozen for a moment
and then burst into a medley of yells. Several threw up their clumsy
firelocks and sent their heavy balls crashing through the trees, and the
rest, thinking no doubt that they were ambushed, led a reckless charge into
the jungle. The bold suddenness of that move was Kane's undoing. Had they
hesitated a moment longer he might have faded away unobserved, but as it was
he saw no choice but to meet them openly and sell his life as highly as he
could.

And indeed it was with a certain ferocious fascination that he faced his
howling attackers. They halted in sudden amazement as the tall, grim
Englishman stepped from behind his tree, and in that instant one of them died
with a bullet from Kane's remaining pistol in his heart. Then with yells of
savage rage they flung themselves on their lone defier.

Solomon Kane placed his back against a huge tree and his long rapier
played a shining wheel about him. An Arab and three of his equally fiercer
allies were hacking at him with their heavy curved blades while the rest
milled about, snarling like wolves, as they sought to drive in blade or ball
without maiming one of their own number.

The flickering rapier parried the whistling scimitars and the Arab died on
its point, which seemed to hesitate in his heart only an instant before it
pierced the brain of a sword-wielding warrior. Another attacker dropped his
sword and leaped in to grapple at close quarters. He was disembowelled by the
dirk in Kane's left hand, and the others gave back in sudden fear. A heavy
ball smashed against the tree close to Kane's head and he tensed himself to
spring and die in the thick of them. Then their sheikh lashed them on with
his long whip, and Kane heard him shouting fiercely for his warriors to take
the infidel alive. Kane answered the command with a sudden cast of his dirk,
which hummed so close to the sheikh's head that it slit his turban and sank
deep in the shoulder of one behind him.

The sheikh drew his silver-chased pistols, threatening his own men with
death if they did not take this fierce opponent, and they charged in again
desperately. One of the warriors ran full upon Kane's sword and an Arab
behind the fellow, with ruthless craft, thrust the screaming wretch suddenly
forward on the weapon, driving it hilt-deep in his writhing body, fouling the
blade. Before Kane could wrench it clear, with a yell of triumph the pack
rushed in on him and bore him down by sheer weight of numbers. As they
grappled him from all sides, the Puritan wished in vain for the dirk he had
thrown away. But even so, his taking was none too easy.

Blood spattered and faces caved in beneath his iron-hard fists that
splintered teeth and shattered bone. A warrior reeled away disabled from a
vicious drive of knee to groin. Even when they had him stretched out and
piled man-weight on him, until he could no longer strike with fists or foot,
his long lean fingers sank fiercely through a matted beard to lock about a
corded throat in a grip that took the power of three strong men to break and
left the victim grasping and green-faced.

At last, panting from the terrific struggle, they had him bound hand and
foot and the sheikh, thrusting his pistols back into his silken sash, came
striding to stand and look down at his captive. Kane glared up at the tall,
lean frame, at the hawk-like face with its black-curled beard and arrogant
brown eyes.

"I am the sheikh Hassim ben Said," said the Arab. "Who are you?"

"My name is Solomon Kane," growled the puritan in the sheikh's own
language. "I am an Englishman, you heathen jackal."

The dark eyes of the Arab flickered with interest.

"Suleiman Kahani," said he, giving the Arabesque equivalent of the English
name. "I have heard of you—you have fought the Turks betimes and the
Barbary corsairs have licked their wounds because of you." Kane deigned no
reply. Hassim shrugged his shoulders.

"You will bring a fine price," said he. "Mayhap I will take you to
Stamboul, where there are Shas who would desire such a man among their
slaves. And I mind me now of one Kemal Bey, a man of ships, who wears a deep
scar across his face of your making and who curses the name of Englishman. He
will pay me a high price for you. And behold, oh Frank, I do you the honour
of appointing you a separate guard. You shall not walk in the yoke-chain but
free save for your hands."

Kane made no answer, and at a sign from the sheikh, he was hauled to his
feet and his bonds loosened except for his hands, which they left bound
firmly behind him. A stout cord was looped about his neck and the other end
of this was given into the hand of a huge warrior who bore in his free hand a
great curved scimitar.

"And now what think ye of my favour to you, Frank?" queried the
sheikh.

"I am thinking," answered Kane in a slow, deep voice of menace, "that I
would trade my soul's salvation to face you and your sword, alone and
unarmed, and to tear the heart from your breast with my naked fingers."

Such was the concentrated hate in his deep resounding voice, and such
primal, unconquerable fury blazed from his terrible eyes, that the hardened
and fearless chieftain blanched an involuntarily recoiled as if from a
maddened beast.

Then Hassim recovered his poise and with a short word to his followers,
strode to the head of the cavalcade. Kane noted with thankfulness that the
respite occasioned by his capture had given the girl who had fallen a chance
to rest and revive. The skinning knife had not had time to more than touch
her; she was able to reel along. Night was not far away. Soon the slavers
would be forced to halt and camp.

The Englishman perforce took up the trek, his guard remaining a few paces
behind with a huge blade ever ready. Kane also noted with a touch of grim
vanity, that three more warriors marched close behind, muskets ready and
matches burning. They had tasted his prowess and they were taking no chances.
His weapons had been recovered and Hassim had promptly appropriated all
except the cat-headed ju-ju staff. This had been contemptuously cast aside by
him and taken up by one of the savage warriors.

The Englishman was presently aware that a lean, grey-bearded Arab was
walking along at his side. This Arab seemed desirous of speaking but
strangely timid, and the source of his timidity seemed, curiously enough, the
ju-ju stave which he had taken from the man who had picked it up, and which
he now turned uncertainly in his hands.

"I am Yussef the Hadji," said this Arab suddenly. "I have naught against
you. I had no hand in attacking you and would be your friend if you would let
me. Tell me, Frank, whence comes this staff and how comes it into your
hands ?"

Kane's first inclination was to consign his questioner to the infernal
regions, but a certain sincerity of manner in the old man made him change
his mind and he answered: "It was given me by my blood-brother—a
magician of the Slave Coast, named N'Longa."

The old Arab nodded and muttered in his beard and presently sent a warrior
running forward to bid Hassim return. The tall sheikh presently came striding
back along the slow-moving column, with a clank and jingle of daggers and
sabres, with Kane's dirk and pistols thrust into his wide sash.

"Look, Hassim." the old Arab thrust forward the stave, "you cast it away
without knowing what you did!"

"And what of it?" growled the sheikh. "I see naught but a staff—
sharp-pointed and with the head of a cat on the other end—a staff with
strange infidel carvings upon it."

The older man shook it at him in excitement: "This staff is older than the
world! It holds mighty magic! I have read of it in the old iron-bound books
and Mohammed—on whom peace!—himself hath spoken of it by allegory
and parable! See the cat-head upon it? It is the head of a goddess of ancient
Egypt! Ages ago, before Mohammed taught, before Jerusalem was, the priests of
Bast bore this rod before the bowing, chanting worshippers! With it Musa did
wonders before Pharaoh and when the Yahudi fled from Egypt they bore it with
them. And for centuries it was the sceptre of Israel and Judah and with it
Sulieman ben Daoud drove forth the conjurers and magicians and prisoned the
efreets and the evil genii! Look! Again in the hands of a Sulieman we find
the ancient rod!"

Old Yussef had worked himself into a pitch of almost fanatic fervour but
Hassim merely shrugged his shoulders.

"It did not save the Jews from bondage nor this Sulieman from our
captivity," said he. "I value it not as much as I esteem the long thin blade
with which he loosed the souls of three of my best swordsmen."

Yussef shook his head. "Your mockery will bring you to no good end,
Hassim. Some day you will meet a power that will not divide before your sword
or fall to your bullets. I will keep the staff, and I warn you—abuse
not the Frank. He has borne the holy and terrible staff of Sulieman and Musa
and the Pharaohs, and who knows what magic he has drawn there from? For it is
older than the world and has known the terrible hands of strange pre-Adamite
priests in the silent cities beneath the seas, and has drawn from an Elder
World mystery and magic unguessed by humankind. There were strange kings and
stranger priests when the dawns were young, and evil was, even in their day.
And with this staff they fought the evil which was ancient when their strange
world was young, so many millions of years ago that a man would shudder to
count them." Hassim answered impatiently and strode away with old Yussef
following him persistently and chattering away in a querulous tone. Kane
shrugged his mighty shoulders. With what he knew of the strange powers of
that strange staff, he was not one to question the old man's assertions,
fantastic as they seemed.

This much he knew—that it was made of a wood that existed nowhere on
earth today. It needed but the proof of sight and touch to realize that its
material had grown in some world apart. The exquisite workmanship of the
head, of a pre-pyramidal age, and the hieroglyphics, symbols of a language
that was forgotten when Rome was young—these, Kane sensed, were
additions as modern to the antiquity of the staff itself as would be English
words carved on the stone monoliths of Stonehenge.

As for the cat-head—looking at it sometimes Kane had a peculiar
feeling of alteration; a faint sensing that once the pommel of the staff was
carved with a different design. The dust-ancient Egyptian who had carved the
head of Bast had merely altered the original figure, and what that figure had
been, Kane had never tried to guess. A close scrutiny of the staff always
aroused a disquieting and almost dizzy suggestion of abysses of eons,
unprovocative to further speculation.

The day wore on. The sun beat down mercilessly, then screened itself in
the great trees as it slanted toward the horizon. The slaves suffered
fiercely for water and a continual whimpering rose from their ranks as they
staggered blindly on. Some fell and half-crawled, and were half-dragged by
their reeling yoke-mates. When all were buckling from exhaustion, the sun
Nipped, night rushed on, and a halt was called. Camp was pitched, guards
thrown out. The slaves were fed scantily and given enough water to keep life
in them— but only just enough. Their fetters were not loosened, but
they were allowed to sprawl about as they might. Their fearful thirst and
hunger having been somewhat eased, they bore the discomforts of their
shackles with characteristic stoicism.

Kane was fed without his hands being untied, and he was given all the
water he wished. The patient eyes of the slaves watched him drink, silently,
and he was sorely ashamed to guzzle what others suffered for; he ceased
before his thirst was fully quenched. A wide clearing had been selected, on
all sides of which rose gigantic trees. After the Arabs had eaten and while
the black Moslems were still cooking their food, old Yussef came to Kane and
began to talk about the staff again. Kane answered his questions with
admirable patience, considering the hatred he bore the whole race to which
the Hadji belonged, and during the conversation, Hassim came striding up and
looked down in contempt. Hassim, Kane ruminated, was the very symbol of
militant Islam —bold, reckless, materialistic, sparing nothing, fearing
nothing, as sure of his own destiny and as contemptuous of the rights of
others as the most powerful Western king. "Are you maundering about that
stick again?" he gibed. "Hadji, you grow childish in your old age." Yussef's
beard quivered in anger. He shook the staff at his sheikh like a threat of
evil.

"Your mockery little befits your rank, Hassim," he snapped. "We are in the
heart of a dark and demon-haunted land, to which long ago were banished the
devils from Arabia, if this staff, which any but a fool can tell is no rod of
any world we know, has existed down to our day, who knows what other things,
tangible or intangible, may have existed through the ages? This very trail we
follow—know you how old it is? Men followed it before the Seljuk came
out of the East or the Roman came out of the West. Over this very trail,
legends say, the great Sulieman came when he drove the demons westward out of
Asia and prisoned them in strange prisons. And will you say—"

A wild shout interrupted him. Out of the shadows of the jungle a warrior
came flying as if from the hounds of Doom. With arms flinging wildly, eyes
rolling to display the whites, and mouth wide open so that all his gleaming
teeth were visible, he made an image of stark terror not soon forgotten. The
Moslem horde leaped up, snatching their weapons, and Hassim swore:

"That's Ali, whom I sent to scout for meat—perchance a
lion—"

But no lion followed the man who fell at Hassim's feet, mouthing gibberish
and pointing wildly back at the black jungle whence the nerve-strung watchers
expected some brain-shattering horror to burst. "He says he found a strange
mausoleum back in the jungle," said Hassim with a scowl, "but he cannot tell
what frightened him. He only knows a great horror overwhelmed him and sent
him flying. Ali, you are a fool and a rogue."

He kicked the grovelling savage viciously, but the other Arabs drew about
him in some uncertainty. The panic was spreading among the native
warriors.

"They will bolt in spite of us," muttered a bearded Arab, uneasily
watching the native allies who, milled together, jabbered excitedly and flung
fearsome glances over the shoulders. "Hassim, 'twere better to march on a few
miles. This is an evil place after all, and though 'tis likely the fool, Ali,
was frighted by his own shadow—still—"

"Still," jeered the sheikh, "you will all feel better when we have left it
behind. Good enough; to still your fears I will move camp—but first I
will have a look at this thing. Lash up the slaves we'll swing into the
jungle and pass by this mausoleum; perhaps some great king lies there. No one
will be afraid if we all go in a body with guns."

So the weary slaves were whipped into wakefulness and stumbled along
beneath the whips again. The native allies went silently and nervously,
reluctantly obeying Hassim's implacable will but huddling close to the Arabs.
The moon had risen, huge, red and sullen, and the jungle was bathed in a
sinister silver glow that etched the brooding trees in black shadow. The
trembling Ali pointed out the way, somewhat reassured by his savage master's
presence. And so they passed through the jungle until they came to a strange
clearing among the giant trees—strange because nothing grew there. The
trees ringed it in a disquieting symmetrical manner, and no lichen or moss
grew on the earth, which seemed to have been blasted and blighted in a
strange fashion. And in the midst of the glade stood the mausoleum.

A great brooding mass of stone it was, pregnant with ancient evil. Dead
with the dead of a hundred centuries it seemed, yet Kane was aware that the
air pulsed about it, as with the slow, unhuman breathing of some gigantic,
invisible monster.

The Arab's native allies drew back muttering, assailed by the evil
atmosphere of the place; the slaves stood in a patient, silent group beneath
the trees. The Arabs went forward to the frowning black mass, and Yussef,
taking Kane's cord from his guard, led the Englishman with him like a surly
mastiff, as if for protection against the unknown.

"Whence come these stones?" muttered Yussef uneasily. "They are of dark
and forbidding aspect. Why should a great sultan lie in state so far from any
habitation of man? If there were ruins of an old city hereabouts it would be
different—"

He bent to examine the heavy metal door with its huge lock, curiously
sealed and fused. He shook his head forebodingly as he made out the ancient
Hebraic characters carved on the door.

"I can not read them," he quavered, "and belike it is well for me I can
not. What ancient kings sealed up is not good for men to disturb. Hassim, let
us hence. This place is pregnant with evil for the sons of men."

But Hassim gave him no heed. "He who lies within is no son of Islam," said
he, " and why should we not despoil him of the gems and riches that
undoubtedly were laid to rest with him? Let us break open this door."

Some of the Arabs shook their heads doubtfully but Hassim's word was law.
Calling to him a huge warrior who bore a heavy hammer, he ordered him to
break open the door.

As the man swung up his sledge, Kane gave a sharp exclamation. Was he mad?
The apparent antiquity of this brooding mass of stone was proof that it had
stood undisturbed for thousands of years. Yet he could have sworn that he
heard the sounds of footfalls within! Back and forth they padded, as if
something paced the narrow confines of that grisly prison in a never-ending
monotony of movement.

A cold hand touched the spine of Solomon Kane. Whether the sounds
registered on his conscious ear or on some unsounded deep of soul or sub-
feeling, he could not tell, but he knew that somewhere within his
consciousness there reechoed the tramp of monstrous feet from within that
ghastly mausoleum.

"Stop!" he exclaimed. "Hassim, I may be mad, but I hear the tread of some
fiend within that pile of stone." Hassim raised his hand and checked the
hovering hammer. He listened intently, and the others strained their ears in
a silence that had suddenly become tense.

Kane decided he must be mad. Yet in his heart he knew he was never saner,
and he knew somehow that this occult keenness of the deeper senses that set
him apart from the Arabs came from long association with the ju-ju staff that
old Yussef now held in his shaking hands.

Hassim laughed harshly and made a gesture to the warrior. The hammer fell
with a crash that re-echoed deafeningly and shivered off through the black
jungle in a strangely altered cachinnation. Again—again—and again
the hammer fell, driven with all the power of rippling muscles and mighty
body. And between the blows Kane still heard that lumbering tread, and he who
had never known fear as men know it, felt the cold hand of terror clutching
at his heart. This fear was apart from earthly or mortal fear, as the sound
of the footfalls was apart from mortal tread. Kane's fright was like a cold
wind blowing on him from outer realms of unguessed Darkness, bearing him the
evil and decay of an outlived epoch and an unutterably ancient period. Kane
was not sure whether he heard those footfalls or by some dim instinct sensed
them. But he was sure of their reality. They were not the tramp of man or
beast; but inside that black, hideously ancient mausoleum some nameless thing
moved with floor-shaking and elephantine tread.

The powerful warrior seated and panted with the difficulty of his task.
But at last, beneath the heavy blows the ancient lock shattered; the hinges
snapped; the door burst inward. And Yussef screamed.

From that black gaping entrance no tiger-fanged beast or demon, of solid
flesh and blood leaped forth. But a fearful stench flowed out in billowing,
almost tangible waves and in one brain-shattering, ravening rush, whereby the
gaping door seemed to gush blood, the Horror was upon them. It enveloped
Hassim, and the fearless chieftain, hewing vainly at the almost intangible
terror, screamed with sudden, unaccustomed fright as his lashing simitar
whistled only through stuff as yielding and unharmable as air, and he felt
himself lapped by coils of death and destruction.

Yussef shrieked like a lost soul, dropped the ju-ju stave and joined his
fellows who streamed out into the jungle in mad flight, preceded by their
howling allies. Only the slaves fled not, but stood shackled to their doom,
wailing their terror. As in a nightmare of delirium Kane saw Hassim swaying
like a reed in the wind, lapped about by a gigantic pulsing red Thing that
had neither shape nor earthly substance. Then, as the crack of splintering
bones came to him, and the sheikh's body buckled like a straw beneath a
stamping hoof, the Englishman burst his bonds with one volcanic effort and
caught up the ju-ju stave.

Hassim was down, crushed and dead, sprawled like a broken toy with
shattered limbs awry, and the red pulsing Thing was lurching toward Kane like
a thick cloud of blood in the air, that continually changed its shape and
form, and yet somehow trod lumberingly as if on monstrous legs!

Kane felt the cold fingers of fear claw at his brain, but he braced
himself, and lifting the ancient staff, struck with all his power into the
centre of the Horror. And he felt an unnameable, immaterial substance meet
and give way before the falling staff. Then he was almost strangled by the
nauseous burst of unholy stench that flooded the air, and somewhere down the
dim vistas of his soul's consciousness re-echoed unbearably a hideous
formless cataclysm that he knew was the death-screaming of the monster. For
it was down and dying at his feet, its crimson paling in slow surges like the
rise and receding of red waves on some foul coast. And as it paled, the
soundless screaming dwindled away into cosmic distances as though it faded
into some sphere apart and aloof beyond human ken.

Kane, dazed and incredulous, looked down on a shapeless, colourless, all
but invisible mass at his feet which he knew was the corpse of the Horror,
dashed back into the black realms from whence it had come, by a single blow
of the staff of Solomon. Aye, the same staff, Kane knew, that in the hands of
a mighty King and magician had ages ago driven the monster into that strange
prison, to bide until ignorant hands loosed it again upon the world.

The old tales were true then, and King Solomon had in truth driven the
demons westward and sealed them in strange places. Why had he let them live?
Was human magic too weak in those dim days to more than subdue the devils?
Kane shrugged his shoulders in wonderment. He knew nothing of magic, yet he
had slain where that other Solomon had but imprisoned.

And Solomon Kane shuddered, for he had looked on Life that was not Life as
he knew it, and had dealt and witnessed Death that was not Death as he knew
it. Again the realization swept over him, as it had in the dust-haunted halls
of Atlantean Negari, as it had in the abhorrent Hills of the Dead, as it had
in Akaana—that human life was but one of a myriad forms of existence,
that worlds existed within worlds, and that there was more than one plane of
existence. The planet men call the earth spun on through the untold ages,
Kane realized, and as it spun it spawned Life, and living things which
wriggled about it as maggots are spawned in rot and corruption. Man was the
dominant maggot now; why should he in his pride suppose that he and his
adjuncts were the first maggots—or the last to rule a planet quick with
unguessed life. He shook his head, gazing in new wonder at the ancient gift
of N'Longa, seeing in it at last not merely a tool of black magic, but a
sword of good and light against the powers of inhuman evil forever. And he
was shaken with a strange reverence for it that was almost fear. Then he bent
to the Thing at his feet, shuddering to feel its strange mass slip through
his fingers like wisps of heavy fog. He thrust the staff beneath it and
somehow lifted and levered the mass back into the mausoleum and shut the
door.

Then he stood gazing down at the strangely mutilated body of Hassim,
noting how it was smeared with foul slime and how it had already begun to
decompose. He shuddered again, and suddenly a low timid voice aroused him
from his sombre cogitations. The captives knelt beneath the trees and watched
with great patient eyes. With a start he shook off his strange mood. He took
from the mouldering corpse his own pistols, dirk and rapier, making shift to
wipe off the clinging foulness that was already flecking the steel with rust.
He also took up a quantity of powder and shot dropped by the Arabs in their
frantic flight. He knew they would return no more. They might die in their
flight, or they might gain through the interminable leagues of jungle to the
coast; but they would not turn back to dare the terror of that grisly
glade.

Kane came to the wretched slaves and after some difficulty released them.
"Take up these weapons which the warriors dropped in their haste," said he,
"and get you home. This is an evil place. Get ye back to your villages and
when the next Arabs come, die in the ruins of your huts rather than be
slaves."

Then they would have knelt and kissed his feet. but he, in much confusion,
forbade them roughly. Then as they made preparations to go, one said to him:
"Master, what of thee? Wilt thou not return with us? Thou shalt be our
king!"

But Kane shook his head.

"I go eastward," said he. And so the tribespeople bowed to him and turned
back on the long trail to their own homeland. And Kane shouldered the staff
that had been the rod of the Pharaohs and of Moses and of Solomon and of
nameless Atlantean kings behind them, and turned his face eastward, halting
only for a single backward glance at the great mausoleum that other Solomon
had built with strange arts so long ago, and which now loomed dark and
forever silent against the stars.